On Sunday night, we had what I would call a “California Hurricane!” So, there was no thunder, no lightening, no threat of tornados, and just a “normal” rain…BUT THE WIND!!!!!!! Holy Cow!!!!! The wind, when it sweeps across the top of the mountain, is SCARY!!!!! They say that the winds reached up to 70 mph at times. I believe it! At one point, I was considering taking the kids down into the basement for cover. When we lived in Texas and the crazy wind and rain came, I always worried because we had smaller trees that could blow over with very little wind. We “hunkered down” a lot in Texas! On the mountain, we have MASSIVE trees, so I don’t usually worry that wind will blow them over. However, 70 mph winds can blow over just about anything! Yikes! Our house and camp faired pretty well. There was debris everywhere, and we knew of one tree that was down in the road Sunday night, but no one blew away and all of our facilities were fine.

Then, on Monday morning the kids and I got ready to head down for a school day. As we headed out of camp, this was in the road. The only road out.

I turned around and came to get Micah. He drove up with us to see if there was any possibility of driving around the tree. There was BARELY enough room, but we squeezed/squeaked by and started the rest of our journey. At this point, the temperature outside was 28 degrees! By the time we got to the summit of the mountain, these were our views!

Breathtaking! I absolutely love it when the trees are covered with ice! I know that it’s not the safest or best scenario, but MAN is it gorgeous!!!! (And, yes, I borrowed the bottom two pictures! They used a real camera, not their phone!)

We continued on to school, which took us 1 hour and 50 minutes due to traffic! Ugh! By the time school was out, the temperature in Oceanside was 76 degrees. (28 degrees on the mountain and 76 degrees in town. Can we say LAYERING of the clothes is a requirement?!) As we headed home, the sunset was insane! (I didn’t take this one either, but I promise you this is what it looked like!)